Monday, October 24, 2016

It was with anger and disbelief
that I read Deepti Kapoor’s recent article in The Guardian titled “An idyll no more: why I’m leaving Goa”. While
there is no denying that Goa is in fact facing a looming ecological and
political crisis, what is galling is that Kapoor does not acknowledge her own
role in the mess that Goans find themselves in. Kapoor is silent about the
privilege that she enjoys – the privilege of the (largely North) Indian elites,
who dominated British India, led the anti-colonial nationalist movement, and
who now operate as the embodiment of colonial power in places like Goa. This is
precisely the relationship that is to blame for the many ills that Kapoor
documents, and that allows Kapoor to escape Goa with relatively no loss, while
Goans are left not only with a ruined ecology and social fabric but a
continuing brutal colonial relationship with India.

The relationship of the Indian
elites to Goa is by no means innocent. For that matter, neither is the
relationship of India to Goa. Rather, these relationships are built on the
willful ignoring of history, to enable Indians to create Goa and Goans not only
as property of the Indian empire but as a pleasure park where they can imagine
themselves to be in their own little part of Europe. Take, for example, the way
in which Kapoor chooses to label older houses in Goa “Portuguese villas”
despite the fact that many Goans, including scholars, have pointed out that there
is nothing Portuguese to these homes. Except for the fact that they were
built by Goans, who were Portuguese citizens at the time, these were, and are,
Goan homes. The reason for this stubborn insistence is linked to the fact that
these houses are in high demand by the Indian elites who choose to own second
homes in Goa. It is precisely in calling the built forms “Portuguese” that Goa
and Goans are transformed into props that allow for the territory to be read as
Europe in South Asia, as a
seaside Riviera where Indian elites can play out their European fantasies.

This colonial relationship, it
should be pointed out, is not unique to the relationship between Goa and India.
In fact, it follows a longer colonial relationship enjoyed by the Northern
European, and principally British elites, with the European South – namely,
Italy, Spain, and Portugal. It was to these historically Catholic locations
that the largely Protestant elites of the North fled to enjoy not just the sun
but the pleasures of the flesh. The European South, and by extension the
overseas colonies of these countries, were marked out as spaces for frolic and
relaxation, and fabulous lifestyles afforded as a result of the poorer
economies of the host locations. Additionally, these locations were identified
as places for inspiration for artistes and writers. In post-colonial times, the
elite British Indian has actively taken on the gaze and privilege of the
British overlord, and looks at Goa precisely through the lenses that the
British used to view the European South. No wonder then that Kapoor, author of the
novel A Bad Character (2014), also
chose Goa as a place for future writing projects.

The continuation of this imperial
gaze is also deeply rooted in colonial politics. As Sukanya Banerjee
demonstrates in her book Becoming
Imperial Citizens: Indians in the Late-Victorian Empire (2010), the end of
empire and the creation of an independent nation-state was not the goal
envisaged by early Indian nationalists. On the contrary, South Asian dominant
caste elites were stakeholders in the empire rather than its opponents. Given
this proximity to the imperial project, what they deeply desired was the status
of Imperial British citizen and equality with the British overlord. Banerjee
also demonstrates the way that Gandhi himself was invested in the pursuit of
this status. The figure of Gandhi is critical here, because it was he who effectively
created a mass movement by recruiting subaltern groups to make what had earlier
been a largely elitist cause. This mass recruitment was necessary for the
elites to be taken seriously by the British Crown. The Crown was convinced that
while the Indians merited the status of subjects, they could not be imperial
citizens and thereby claim equality with the British. The rallying of the
masses forced a change in the nature of the movement to assume the character of
a nationalist anti-colonial project. Independence was now the only answer.

Thus, the objective of the
nationalist elites was, rather, parity with the British and participation in
the imperial project. The continued desire for imperial prominence that
motivated these caste elites ensured a number of features that have marked
post-colonial India. By exerting various pressures on the princely states and
acquiring, forcefully if necessary, the territories of other colonial powers,
the nationalist elites put together an Indian empire that even the British Raj
had not managed to. This new post-colonial empire was held in place by retaining
most of the colonial laws, and an imperial perspective guided the relationship
with the territories and peoples that were assimilated into post-colonial
India. Thus, along with Goan houses being labeled “Portuguese”, Goans have been
marked out as fun-loving, relaxed, and laid back, just as the southern
Europeans and Latins. Further, just as the British elites travelled to the
European South for sensorial excess, so too has Goa been marked out as a place
for excess. Note that Kapoor’s narrative suggests that her brother had his mind
blown – normally a reference to the effect of psychotropic drugs – when he saw
his first nudist in Goa. The Kapoor family’s relationship with Goa seems to be
marked by an excess that is unavailable in India. As R. Benedito Ferrão points
out, Kapoor suggests her own sensorial relationship with Goa through the
excessive exclamation marks that she uses when listing the things that brought
her to Goa: “The beaches! The restaurants! The music, and the people!” Further,
as if to prove the point of a continuity between the imperial British and the
contemporary imperial Indian elite, Kapoor states that she has decided “to look
toward Europe or Latin America” in her search for a new place to live. It
should be obvious that Latin America is placed along the same continuum as Goa
in terms of being the place of Iberian influenced tropical languor and excess. Therefore,
Kapoor will merely shift from Goa to another location that offers a similar
southern European backdrop for the party.

Interestingly, the insistence of
Indians, such as Kapoor, on labeling the built landscape in Goa as different
from India reveals a disinclination to be attentive to the historical and legal
differences of this former Portuguese territory. Unlike the legal scenario that
unfolded in British India, Goans were constitutionally recognized as Portuguese
citizens as far back as the early 1800s. This resulted in a restricted segment
of the population being entitled to vote in parliamentary elections. And vote
they did. Goan elites regularly sent voluble representatives to Lisbon, who
established the legal and social parity of Goans with metropolitan Portuguese. This
situation was temporarily suspended in the years when Goa, like the rest of
Portugal, suffered an authoritarian regime from the 1930s until 1974. It was in
this situation that India sent troops in to militarily wrest Goa from the
Portuguese. Rather than engage with the political agency that was being
expressed within and outside of the territory, India simply asserted
sovereignty over the territory and extended citizenship to persons residing in the
territory. Given the right of colonized peoples to self-determination, this was
an act for which there was no legal precedent, but was based on the assertion
of a dubious argument of cultural homogeneity.

With the normalization of
relations between Portugal and India in 1975, Portugal recognized the
continuing right of citizenship of residents of its former territories in
India. As consciousness of this continuing right percolates through Portuguese
Indian society, many have chosen to access and assert this right. The Indian
state, and consequently most Indians, however, fail to see this as a resumption
of an existing right. They see it instead, as the acquisition of dual
citizenship, which some argue is prohibited by the Indian legal system. This
places Portuguese Indians – in this case, Goans – in an awkward situation,
where they have to give up political engagement with Goa, and a host of other
rights, if they choose to assert their right to Portuguese citizenship. Like
most Indians, Kapoor seems to fail to recognize this complexity and naively
suggests that Goans are leaving, or, as she puts it, “looking elsewhere”. As I articulated
in an essay some time ago, Goans are not leaving; they are merely employing
one more way to maintain their historical connections and pursue livelihood
options. It is only in the face of an Indian state that refuses to recognize
the complexity of Portuguese Indian history, and prevents this movement, that
Goans are, in fact, being forced to
leave.

At the end of the day, it is the
refusal to recognize this most basic of rights, that of citizenship
pre-existing the Indian takeover of Goa that complicates the relationship of
India, and Indians, with Goa, and Goans. The refusal to recognize a
pre-existing constitutional right of citizenship transforms the Indian presence
in Goa into one of occupation and not post-colonial liberation.

The colonial nature of India’s
presence in Goa is perhaps best captured in the way the territory has been
actively converted into India’s pleasure periphery. In his book, Refiguring Goa (2015), Raghuraman S. Trichur
points out that “it was only after the state sponsored development of tourism
in the 1980s (more than two decades after Goa's liberation/occupation in 1961),
was Goa effectively integrated into the Indian nation-state” (p. 13). This is
to say that the integration of this former Portuguese territory, which ought to
have been given the right to self-determination, was ensured through the
process of articulating Goa’s “otherness” or cultural distancing, as evidenced
by the social practices and performances that constitute the tourism
destination in Goa. Thus, Trichur argues, Goa’s emergence as a tourism
destination is more than the fortuitous agent of economic growth: “it is also an
arena, a discursive frame where the Indian State intersects with Goan society”
(p. 16). Tourism, then, is precisely the way through which Indian colonialism
is exercised in Goa. Indeed, the usage of “Portuguese” houses, in reference to
the homes of Goans, suggests homes not continually inhabited by Goans but open
for occupation by the “helpful”
outsiders that come to renew Goan life.

While Kapoor correctly lists the
many problems that are cropping up in Goa as a result of a tourist industry
gone wild, she seems to place the responsibility for the looming ecological and
social disaster primarily in Goan hands. One reads in Kapoor’s narrative the
usual suggestion that it is the greedy Goans who are selling agricultural land
and pulling down ancestral homes, and that the local government has no vision.
What escapes her is that Goans are all too often subject to forces not within their
control. Goans are trapped in an economy that, rather than working on producing
more varied opportunities for the locals, has for decades now relied
exclusively on tapping the extractive industries of either tourism or mining,
or on overseas remittances. While the tourist economy has produced huge profits
for some, incomes have not risen to keep pace with the increased cost of
living. In such a context, there are two options that will assure people
without the material resources or skill sets to fuel social mobility of persons
who cannot achieve betterment in Goa. The first is the sale of land to persons
in search of the fabled Goan lifestyle. The second is migration in search of
gainful and respectable employment. The irony is that the critique of the Portuguese
presence in Goa was that they failed to develop a viable economy, which
required people to migrate to earn a living that would assure them and their
families of a higher standard of living. Indeed, for the vast majority of the
population life under Portuguese rule was experienced more as life under
landlord rule. And this Goan lifestyle was no idyll. It was only through
migration that they could economically emancipate themselves. It was only with
the economic liberation possible through migration that Goa, now a place to
return for the summers, was constructed as an idyll. As it turns out, the
transition to Indian rule has not changed much, as many Goans are still forced to migrate.

Yet it is not economics alone that
Goans are trapped by but, the political system itself. There is a clear
understanding among the many groups in the territory that this system is not
delivering good governance and that there is a need for dramatic change. In
their imitation of Britain, British Indians adopted the
unsophisticated first-past-the-post system of determining political
representatives. As Dr. Ambedkar pointed out, the ills of the system are such
that it
does not allow for marginalized groups to find a voice in the legislature. Even
though there are moves to shift to a system of proportional representation, it
seems unlikely that there will be a change anytime soon. Thus, Goans are chained
to a political structure that they had no say in determining, and that clearly
does not work for their territory, given that it reproduces persons who
represent majoritarian politics. One wonders whether Goan politics may not have
been dramatically different if the people of the territory were allowed to
innovate with a proportional representation system followed in Portugal.

But Kapoor’s text is not merely
illustrative of the problem that Goans have with the Indian elites. Rather, it exposes
the colonial relationship of these elites with marginalized Indian populations.
The trouble with the Indian elites is that they do not see themselves as a part
of the political processes of the subcontinent, believing themselves too good
for the rest of the citizens of India. Indeed, this is part of their adoption
of the colonial gaze. These elites see the residents of the rest of the
continent as a strange race that requires firm governance. The review
of Kapoor’s book by Prashansa Taneja makes this quite obvious when she
reports, “more often than not, she gives into the temptation to exoticise
Delhi, and India, for the reader. Many Indian women cover their heads on a
daily basis, but when Idha [the character in Kapoor’s book] does so at a Sufi
shrine, she feels she becomes ‘Persian, dark-eyed, pious and transformed’.” One
could argue that she succumbs to the use of clichés precisely because like
other members of her class, Kapoor looks at the people in the city of Delhi,
through a gaze adopted from the Raj.

Goa and Goans are locked in an
unequal and unfair colonial relationship with India. Until and unless this
inequality and injustice are resolved, and the relationship is made more equal
– indeed, until the colonial equation at the heart of the imperial Indian
project is resolved – Goa and Goans may be doomed to destruction. Kapoor’s text
is offensive precisely because she is blind to these facts, and while also
being blind to her own privilege is completely oblivious to the extent to which
her article is a gripe about the loss of her own privileges. Kapoor’s problem
seems to lie in the fact that with other Indians, and not just other elites but
all sorts, coming to play with her toy, the party has been ruined. While Kapoor
may be able to trip off to some other island paradise and live the life of the
wandering elite, where, pray, will the Goans go?

(A version of this post was first published in Raiot webzine on 17 Oct 2016)

Friday, October 14, 2016

The works that one encounters in Retelling, the exhibition of the recent
productions of Karishma D’Souza, should be seen as more than works of art. They
are in fact icons from a contemporary mystic, and could be put to good use not
only by other mystics but by a wider population. Contrary to popular
understanding, icons are more than objects of ritual adoration and worship.
They are in fact bridges that span the gap between a textual tradition and
practice. One can look at Christian practice, for example. The image of a saint
is linked not only to the hagiography of the saint but to the Biblical narrative.
The use of iconography encodes a complex story into a single image for the
viewer. Subsequent to contemplation of the image, the viewer can hope to
imitate the life of the saint, who attempted to imitate the life of Christ. The
iconographer is often familiar with this wider textual tradition, and through
the use of charged symbols, communicates meaning to a practicant of a
tradition. They offer crunched lessons for contemplation with the idea that
these will then be put into practice.

In many ways, Karishma D’Souza is
an iconographer for our times. Unlike conventional iconographers, however,
Karishma does not stick within a single tradition. She is rather like the
mystic, who is never conventional but always transcends boundaries to plumb
unexpected depths and return with powerful insights for contemplation. Thus,
Karishma draws inspiration from the mystical poems of such figures as Sant
Kabirdas, and the Kashmiri poet Lal Dedh. Her references range from the Jataka
tales and the lives of the Bodhisatvas and the Buddha, the brahmanical Puranas,
to more contemporary issues of violence of the Indian state against the
populations of Kashmir, Dalits and tribals.

Karishma also works in the
tradition of the iconographers through the symbolic charge that she presses onto
the colours on the canvas. Take, for example, the use of gold for the ears of
the sleeping Buddha in the work titled “Burma Buddha”. Karishma would have the
golden ears bear three meanings. The first refers to the most common
understanding of gold, as precious; thus, the gold ears designate that to hear
or listen is what is most important. The second offers a more anti-materialist,
and perhaps iconoclastic, suggestion, that gold is an inert metal, and the
golden ears are dead objects incapable of hearing the pleas and prayers of
supplicants. The third reading that she offers is where the similarity of gold
with yellow is played on to suggest that the city in the background painted in
yellow appears golden only in the distance; closer inspection reveals that the
yellow emerges from sand, not gold, and hence is liable to disintegrate at any
moment.

Blue is another colour that runs
through the works in Retelling. Once
again, we could commence with the signification of blue through reference to
its location in “Burma Buddha”. Blue is used in this canvas to represent what
the artist calls “peaceful, expanding space”. Karishma is also aware, however,
that blue is the colour associated with the Ambedkarite movement and hence with
Dalit pride. Given the manner in which the caste-critical poet Kabir is taken
up by some Ambedkarite groups, it is no wonder that “Sand Castles” is marked by
a plethora of blue circles. Each of these circles is a reference to a couplet
of Kabir

from the Bijak of Kabir (compiled and translated by Linda Hess and Sukhdev
Singh).

Take, for instance, the circle on
the top left of the canvas that refers to the following:

A raft of tied together snakes

In the world-ocean.

Let go, and you’ll drown.

Grasp, and they’ll bite your arm.

Or the second circle in the
bottom row that features a tear within a millstone that illustrates the
following:

seeing the mill turn

brings tears to the eyes.

No one who falls between the stones

Comes out unbroken.

If blue is symbolically charged
in Karishma’s works, then so is water, once again signified, as is common, by
blue. Water bodies, and especially rivers, are present in almost every image on
display. Unsurprisingly inspired by the verses of Kabir, who seems to be
critical in this phase of her work, the river is linked with the idea of
overcoming:

Use the strength of your own arm,

Stop putting hope in others.

When the river flows through your own yard,

How can you die of thirst?

The river is present not only in
“Wastelands: dead pasts”, but also in “Chembur”. The foreground of “Chembur”,
alive with indoor plants, references the home of her grandparents in the suburb
of Bombay that Karishma remembers as one of the first “very nurturing” spaces she
encountered. Outside the home lies an empty and terrifying landscape snaked
through by a river that represents the limits that must be overcome on the
journey towards adulthood. Given the title of this canvas one can’t help but
imagine that despite the emptiness the view outside her grandparent’s house is
actually suggestive of an urban landscape. Urban landscapes in Karishma’s
earlier works are often either empty of people suggesting the anomie and
isolation that marks contemporary cities.

The water bodies in “Guarded
city: unseeing” reference a poem from the Kashmiri poet Lal Ded, from the
compilations in the book I Lalla
(selected and translated by Ranjit Hoskote):

Three times I saw a lake overflowing a lake.

Once I saw a lake mirrored in the sky.

Once I saw a lake that bridged

north and south. Mount Haramukh and Lake Kausar.

Seven times I saw a lake shaping itself into emptiness.

Emptiness is also
the theme of “Guarded city: unseeing”. While gated communities represent security
from the population outside the grounds of expensive residential colonies,
Karishma inquires whether this shutting off does not create an anomic sense of
isolation. With curtains drawn over windows, represented here by the thick
black lines in the centre of the canvas, no one looks in, and no one looks out
either. The choice of exclusive surroundings ensures that the very environs
become frightening. This image also makes reference to the political situation
in Kashmir with the island in the top background represented by an island with
chinar. Reading deeper into the canvas, the gated community could also refer to
the Kashmiri people forced into house arrest. The chinar of Kashmir stand mute in
testimony to the violence forced on these people, who are encircled by orange
red-hued hills on all sides.

Similar hues are
also present in “Himalayan landscape: unseeing”, where the orange tents represent
Hindutva and the red on the horizon, blood.

As if in
response to the violence represented by walls is the image “Lal Ded”. In this
case, the wall, a symbol of violence, is also marked by the hues of orange and
red, but it is split apart by the ever present river and calls to mind the
verses from Robert Frost’s poem, “Mending Wall”:

Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,

That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,

And spills the upper boulders in the sun;

And makes gaps even two can pass
abreast.

Perhaps this splitting of the
metaphoric wall through persistence, in this case of aquatic force, is the
resilience that is referred to in the poem from Lal Ded that has influenced
many of the works in this collection:

Resilience: to stand in the path of lightening.

Resilience: to walk when darkness falls at noon.

Resilience: to grind yourself fine in the turning mill.

Resilience will come to you.

While many of
these canvases make visible reference to places that Karishma has visited, the
image that relates most to the Goan context is “Wastelands: dead pasts”. In
this image, the blue neck of the figure emerging from the water is a reference
to the Puranic myth of Shiva Neelakanta. In this myth, Shiva’s neck turned blue
when he consumed the poison that emerged from the fabled churning of the ocean
of milk. In this image, the neck is part of a larger feminine figure that could
be construed as a reference to the idol of Gauri, worshipped in some traditions
a day before her son Ganesh. The present day Gauri is, of course, the
brahmanical usurpation of the vernacular mother goddess Santeri, who is
worshipped by the marginalized communities of Goa in her self-embodied form of
the anthill. In this case, Santeri emerges from a wasteland that has been
created thanks to the effects of the mining industry.

The state of
affairs that Karishma depicts in this canvas need not necessarily be read as an
impotent lament for our future. Rather, there is a peculiar Christian imagery
that can also be read into this image through a reference to the vision of the
Prophet Ezekiel. The Old Testament records the Prophet Ezekiel as having a vision of a valley
filled with very dry bones. In this vision, Ezekiel is commanded by God to
prophesy and put flesh on the bones and subsequently restore the bones to life.
The vision, therefore, is one that promises hope – that even in the darkest of
hours, a return to values can in fact bring redemption. This, I believe, is one
of the messages that one can take away from this icon.

In The Death of the Author (1967), French literary critic and theorist
Roland Barthes argued against the need to incorporate the biographical context
of the author or the meanings intended into the reading of the text. Instead,
he argued in favour of the independence of the artistic production of the
author. The moment the work was produced and subject to the gaze of the audience,
the author was dead, and the work had a life of its own, gaining multiple
readings based on the gazes of infinite numbers of individual readers. A great
liberation is made possible through such a position, allowing for the
proverbial thousand flowers to bloom. Given that each person is now enabled to
bring their own experiences to the reading of the text or image, this diversity
allows for an expansion of formal political democracy into the realm of the
social.

To adopt Barthes’ method while
viewing the works of Karishma D’Souza, however, would leave us that much
poorer. For Karishma’s works have the potential to be more than just objects of
art. Even though many of Karishma’s offerings in this exhibition focus on what
could be seen as hopeless situations, I believe that these icons are in fact
tools through which we can refocus our attention on issues of concern, issues
that scream out for justice to be done, and work towards resolving them. They
have the potential to shake off the illusion that we are captive and focus on
what really matters.

To understand these icons, though,
requires that we enter into the textual world that Karishma has created. The possible
problem that we encounter, however, is that this textual world is rather dense,
given that each canvas is often inspired by more than one text. While this
makes for a particularly rich canvas, it also points to the flip side – to the
liberation that Barthes inaugurated. That is, with the absolute liberty to
bring one’s own reading to a text, there is often a cacophony of voices and
little space for understanding. If everyone’s personal reading is valid, and
there is no fundamental base, how does one make conversation and move forward
towards building a space of consensus?Perhaps
the answer lies in the manner in which we twine engagement with the images and
the producer of the images. It is towards this end that I urge that the works
be seen as icons to be appreciated alongside the many texts that inspired them.

(Essay for the exhibition of Karishma D'Souza's works in Retelling, hosted by the Fundação Oriente, Goa from 13 Oct -9 Nov 2016)

Tuesday, October 4, 2016

I read with interest the recent opinion
piece “The Portuguese nationality bug” on the vexed issue of the rights of Portuguese
Indians to Portuguese citizenship and was disappointed by the author’s refusal
to see the larger picture. I suspect that this is because the author seeks to
resolve the question within the narrow frames of Indian nationalism. As a
result, the argument forwarded in the op-ed seems to buttress the rights of the
state over those of citizens. Such legality will only strengthen the growing
authoritarianism of the Indian state over subjects who, while formally
citizens, increasingly lack the space to realize this condition.

In the opinion piece citizenship is presented as a status that is conferred by a state.
This is not only a peculiarly lawyerly perspective but also a dated idea.
Unsurprisingly, the argument refers to a judgment of the US Supreme Court from 1875. The wider field of contemporary citizenship
theory recognizes that citizenship is more than a status, rather a condition to
be realized. In these more recent understandings, as evidenced in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights (1948) for example, rights are not conferred by a
state, but inhere in the individual. Even the Indian Constitution recognizes
that it is the people who constitute the state as evidenced in the famous lines
of the preamble “We the People of India….” Thus, a post-colonial political
theory recognizes that states are actually constituted by the people, which
formally recognize the rights of people. With the passage of time as our
appreciation of the depths of rights grows, states are required to recognize
these evolving rights. Indeed, this was very much the case with India as well
when from about the 1950s the existing fundamental rights were dramatically
expanded through the interpretations offered by the Supreme Court.

Of the many rights that inhere in individuals, surely the
right of citizenship is the most fundamental.If there was one single right that
the anti-colonial nationalist movements fought for, it was the right of
citizenship. As in the case of British India, the initial demand was for the right to
imperial citizenship, and it was only because the British, hobbled by a
racist imagination, failed to recognize this right, that the Indian
nationalists pressed forward for a national citizenship.

Citizenship must necessarily
be distinguished from nationality. These are two distinct concepts and must
theoretically be kept separate. While citizenship involves a gamut of rights
that allow one to be a political subject, nationality is the status of
belonging that the nation confers on some individuals, and restricts from
others. This is to say, the first deals with rights, while the second is the
realm of cultural belonging. One of the reasons why the debate on the Portuguese
Indian rights to Portuguese citizenship is so vexed is because the various
parties fail to recognize the fundamental differences between these two
concepts. This is obvious even in the opinion piece where there is a constant
switch between the terms nationality and citizenship as if they were the same.

This failure is not surprising given that the nation-state
form that has been taken up across the world purposely seeks to conflate the
concept of the state and the nation. The famous philosopher Hannah Arendt
refers to this as “the transformation of the state from an instrument of the
law into an instrument of the nation”. Taking up this idea, other
scholars have pointed out that “It was this conquest that defined citizens
of the state as nationals whether defined racially, ethically, culturally or even
religiously”. There is, in fact, no good reason for the two concepts to be
conflated. A state can compromise multiple nations, while nations need not have
a state. Take the case of Belgium, which is composed of people that identify
with two different nationalities, the Flemish and the Walloon. Or take India,
which can be said to comprise different nationalities, but refuses to
recognize, and in principle rightly so, that each of these nations needs its
own state. Indeed, the foundation of the contemporary international order as an
association of nation-states can be traced back precisely to the racist
imaginations of the colonial order. To this extent, the assertions of Portuguese
Indians to retaining their Portuguese citizenship while also accepting that of
India stands to offer the world a model in terms of post-colonial citizenship
precisely because it is born of an early modern experience that differs
dramatically from the colonial experience rooted in late-modernity.

What does come out in striking clarity from the argument in
the opinion piece referred to above is the legal position of the former
citizens of Portuguese India in the Indian republic. In addition to the legal
formulation that the argument the op-ed relies on, and the military action of
1961, this population is not a liberated population able to act on equal
footing with other individuals from British India, but in fact a subjugated
population whose “rights” depend on what the State of India grants them. The
noted philosopher Partha Chatterjee has recently articulated a concept
of political society that addresses precisely this point. He argues that
not all who are formally recognized as citizens enjoy rights. Chatterjee suggests
that these people are members not of civil society, but political society.
Members of political society do not enjoy rights, which are permanent and
inhere in the individual; they are merely extended temporary concessions when
these excluded groups challenge the status quo. Once the status quo is secure
these concessions can and often are revoked.

Reading the argument in “The Portuguese nationality bug” in
the context of this framework, given that the citizenship rights of Portuguese
Indians seem to depend on the whims of the Indian state, one can see that what
the Portuguese Indians enjoy are not rights that inhere in the individual and
are not granted by the state, but merely temporary privileges that can be, and
are, rolled back when the State feels like. The privilege of Indian nationality
was extended to these groups when the Indian state needed to consolidate its
hold over the newly conquered territories creating the mirage of extension of
citizenship when in fact the recognition of their pre-existing rights is what
would have constituted acceptance into Indian civil society.It needs to be noted that this is not the
position of the Portuguese state that recognizes the continuing rights of
citizens in territories over which it formerly claimed sovereignty.

The argument also fails to appreciate the federal nature of
the Indian Union, a vision that is embodied in the Constitution. The Indian
constitution patently allows for a diversity of legal regimes within the Indian
Union. Take, for instance, Art. 370 of the Constitution that allows for Kashmir
to have its own constitution. This particular article is the subject of much
vituperation but the fact is that such resentment against Art. 370 has been the
result of Hindu nationalist opposition. Ironically it is Hindu nationalism
which is contrary to the constitutional mandate. Art. 370 must therefore be
seen as embodying the basic structure of the Indian constitution that makes
space for a federal structure that incorporates widely different polities
within a single structure. Consider also the fact that Buddhist monks and nuns
in Sikkim get a
double vote to ensure the representative of the Sangha in the legislature. This
argument for legal pluralism can also be buttressed by reference to the reports
on the conclusion of the Indian state’s negotiations with the Naga activists. Though the terms of the
agreement are still secret, if
a dubious news report is to be believed it appears that the Indian state,
under Prime Minister Modi, has agreed to the Naga demand for a separate
Constitution, as well as a separate flag. Such an agreement, if true, would testify
to the capacity of the Indian Union to accommodate legal difference within a
single federal structure.

A resolution of the question of the Portuguese citizenship
of denizens of the former Portuguese India could contribute to the failing health of
the Indian Union. It would allow an assertion of the dignity of the rights-bearing
individual in opposition to asserting the right of a potentially tyrannical
Indian state. It would contribute to the constitutional imagination of a
federal India, an imagination that has unfortunately been undermined by the
desires of Hindu nationalists and successive central governments.

For too long a time the question regarding the legitimacy of
Portuguese Indians holding on to both Portuguese and Indian citizenship is
being debated in a dry and inspired manner. Given that the question is
admittedly complex, the resolution cannot be obtained through a niggardly
attention to the letter of the law. Rather, what is required is a reference not
merely to the spirit that animates laws, but to the larger questions of
postcolonial justice and the rights of individuals, this is to say a reference
to political theory and the philosophy of law. What is required is not a
debugging of Portuguese nationality, but Indian imaginations.

(A version of this post was first published in the O Heraldo dated 4 Oct 2016)

About Me

Itinerant mendicant captures two aspects of my life perfectly. My educational formation has seen me traverse various terrains, geographical as well as academic. After a Bachelor's in law from the National Law School of India, I worked for a while in the environmental and developmental sector. After a Master's in the Sociology of Law, I obtained a Doctorate in Anthropology in Lisbon for my study of the citizenship experience of Goan Catholics. I am currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Centre for Research in Anthropology at the University Institute of Lisbon, but continue to shuttle between Lisbon and Goa.
I see myself as a mendicant not only because so many of my voyages have been funded by scholarships and grants but because I will accept almost any offer for sensorial and intellectual stimulation, and thank the donor for it.
This blog operates as an archive of my writings in the popular press.